Microsoft brain lateralization patent all about software QA

Last Thursday, Microsoft filed patent application 2008/134,132, which describes a method of "Developing Software Components Based on Brain Lateralization." At first glance, this sounds quite impressive; direct neural programming interfaces, after all, is the stuff science fiction is made of. Closer examination, however, indicates that our dreams of writing C++ code without that pesky keyboard getting in the way remain elusive. Fancy wording or not, Microsoft is essentially attempting to patent something far more basic: the software Quality Assurance (Q&A) process.

The patent application's abstract reads as follows:

A software design process includes three elements—an object/component driven element, a situation/scenario driven element, and an arbitrator/communicator element that is logically interposed and serves as an intermediary between the object/component driven and the situation/scenario driven elements. Through an iterative communication process overseen by the arbitrator/communicator, software design can take place and be measured against a metric. The communication process overseen and implemented by the arbitrator/communicator can allow ideas and developments provided by one element to be translated into a format that the other element understands. Once the metric has been achieved, the design process can be terminated.

Read that over, and you'll notice it mentions neither the brain nor any sort of organizational/methodological principle that could be described as brain-like. Much of the confusion appears to have been caused by two of the diagrams (shown below) that Microsoft included in its application.

According to Redmond, these two figures describe a "lateral brain" approach to software development. On the one hand, we have the engineers and developers, all of whom are apparently left-brained people. On the right hand, we have a company's end users, the vast majority of whom are apparently right-brained people. Since these two groups are apparently incapable of communicating with each other, we need a team of people capable of talking to both sides. Microsoft goes so far as to suggest that the group of arbitrators/communicators develop a metric to address the needs of both engineers and end-users in order to ensure that a project meets its design goals.

Even if we ignore the biological dubiousness of Microsoft's brain analogy, the patent application is full of monstrous holes. Redmond attempts to contrast this lateral brain process as distinct from what it terms marketing-driven or engineering-driven approaches. The problem, of course, is that software development never exists entirely in a vacuum unless the company in question is being driven by incompetent management. Any balanced project will incorporate feedback from both sides of the development equation.

According to Microsoft's patent, the arbitrator/communicator element "serves as an intermediary... [and] can develop a metric against which the software design process is measured. Once one of these elements has been seeded with an initial idea, as intermediary, the arbitrator/communicator can mediate the evolution of the idea that is contributing to the software being designed, as well as iteratively translate back and forth between the object/component driven element [designers] and the situation/scenario driven element [end users]."

If the tasks Microsoft ascribes to its "arbitrator/communicator element" sound familiar, it's because the performance of such work is the raison d'être for what most companies refer to as the Quality Assurance department. According to Dictionary.com, quality assurance is "A system for evaluating performance, as in the delivery of services or the quality of products provided to consumers, customers, or patients."

To be frank, it's hard to make much sense out of this patent. The brain analogies are poorly drawn to the point of being inapplicable, and the patent itself claims ownership of a design process that has been employed by companies for decades, if not longer. The arguable existence of decades of prior art leaves Microsoft's brain lateralization patent looking weak even by patent troll standards; there's nothing in the company's application that would prevent IBM from claiming it employed exactly this type of development process when it was building mainframes in the 1960s. By all appearances, patent application 20,080,134,132 is a mystery wrapped in an enigma—and covered in a lot of wasted effort.